American Experience | Eugene O'Neill | People & Events | PBS People & Events Eugene O'Neill 1 of 9 Eugene O'Neill drew on the tragic events of his dysfunctional family's life to produce some of the most powerful dramas of the American theater. Born in a Hotel Room O'Neill's difficulties began almost from the time of his birth on October 16, 1888 in a New York hotel in what later became known as Times Square. Soon after the delivery, his mother, Ella O'Neill , became addicted to morphine. (Decades later, Eugene would dramatize her tragedy through the character Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night.) Throughout Eugene's childhood, his stage-actor father, James O'Neill , toured in the lucrative but ultimately disappointing lead role in The Count of Monte Cristo. Eugene traveled with his father for his first seven years, an experience that would influence the future playwright's work. "As a boy, I saw so much of the old, ranting, artificial romantic stuff that I always had a sort of contempt for the theater," he would later recall. School and Religion Entering a strict Catholic boarding school, St.

Aloysius Academy for Boys, in September 1895, O'Neill would rebel against the demands of school and religion. After learning as a teenager of his mother's drug addiction, O'Neill defied his father by refusing to go to church. His struggles with God and religion would later prove to be a frequent theme of his plays. He enrolled in Princeton University in September 1906 but was kicked out after his first year, owing to poor academics and heavy drinking. Aside from a course in playwriting that O'Neill later took at Harvard, he would have no other formal education. At Sea O'Neill married just before turning 21, but he did not settle down. In fact, soon after he wed Kathleen Jenkins against his father's wishes, he set sail for Honduras and then South America aboard a ship called the Charles Racine. His wife gave birth in May 1910 to a son, Eugene O'Neill Jr., whom his father did not see until the boy was 11. O'Neill preferred the simple life of sailors and the sea to family life, but heavy drinking drove him to despair.

After returning to New York and living the life of a derelict, O'Neill in 1912 attempted suicide in his room at Jimmy-the-Priest's boarding house and saloon, which -- together with the Hell Hole -- would one day become the setting for his play The Iceman Cometh. That same year, he and Kathleen divorced, and he contracted tuberculosis. It was during his recovery at a sanatorium -- which he came to regard as his "rebirth" -- that he determined he would become a playwright. "I want to be an artist or nothing," he said. Success as a Playwright After Eugene O'Neill attended a playwriting course at Harvard in 1914, followed by a frustrating and mostly drunken year in New York's Greenwich Village attempting unsuccessfully to have his one-act plays produced, he joined an experimental theater group in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which produced his one-act sea play Bound East for Cardiff. The group formed the Playwrights' Theatre in Greenwich Village and staged several O'Neill productions in the following years.

During this period, O'Neill married his second wife, writer Agnes Boulton, in 1918, with whom he had two children , Shane and Oona. O'Neill's first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, premiered on Broadway on February 3, 1920, at the Morosco Theater. The play, which features two brothers who love the same woman, won O'Neill the first of four Pulitzer Prizes in drama. Family Losses A week after Beyond the Horizon opened, James O'Neill suffered a stroke. Before he died in August 1920, he shared with his son Eugene the bitterness he felt over his lost potential as an actor. Two years later, O'Neill's mother died; the next year his brother, Jamie, an alcoholic, died at the age of 45. O'Neill would dramatize the lives of his family members in his plays, most vividly in Long Day's Journey Into Night. Fruitful Period After the debut of his first play on Broadway, O'Neill wrote prolifically , completing 20 long plays and many shorter ones over a span of 23 years.

These plays included The Emperor Jones, The Hairy Ape, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Pulitzer Prize-winners Strange Interlude and Anna Christie. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1936, the first -- and only -- American dramatist to win the honor. During this period, he also met the woman who would become his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, an actress who played a role in the Broadway production of his play The Hairy Ape. He left his wife Agnes in 1928 and set sail for Europe with Carlotta, whom he married the next year. They remained together in an often turbulent relationship until his death, with Carlotta providing O'Neill the protective environment he required to sustain his art. More Tragedies Haunted by his painful upbringing and embattled family life, O'Neill faced troubles with his own children that coincided with his physical deterioration. He completed three of his great tragedies, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, between 1939 and 1944, before a neuromuscular disorder increasingly impeded his ability to write.

In 1943 he disowned his daughter Oona for marrying film star Charlie Chaplin , who was about her father's age. His son Shane was arrested for heroin possession in 1948 and estranged from his father, while his first-born child Eugene O'Neill Jr. committed suicide in 1950. Died in a Hotel Room In 1953, his health failing, O'Neill lived his last days in a hotel room in Boston with Carlotta tending to him. He instructed her not to bring a priest to his funeral. "If there is a God and I meet Him," he told her, "we'll talk things over personally, man to man." He died on November 27, 1953, having left instructions with his publisher that Long Day's Journey Into Night should not be published until 25 years after his death. Carlotta, however, took the play to another publisher, Yale University Press, which published it in 1956. It opened the same year on Broadway and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize .

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888 - 1953) - Genealogy Eugene Gladstone O'Neill New York, NY, United States Death: in Boston, Massachusetts, United States Place of Burial: Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts, United States Immediate Family: Half brother of Alfred O'Neill Occupation: Australian Newspapers Text: ... after serving in ie aircraft-carrier Boxer in ie Korea area. EUGENE O'NEILL, famous U ... the I downfall of the French Gov- ernment on'*... Publication: Nov 29 1953 - Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: ... heavily on thc life and death of America's greatest playwright, Eugene O'Neill, as it did on most of his plays. His death from bron- chi... Publication: Nov 29 1953 - Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Page: ... U.S. PLAYWRIGHT Australian Associated Press "DOSTON, Sun.-Eugene O'Neill, 65-year-old playwright and Nobel literary prize winner ...... Publication: Nov 30 1953 - Hobart, Tasmania, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: ...

did not know any of the victims. — (AAP). ?k * * PLAYWRIGHT Eugene O'Neill, who died of bron chial pneumonia last Friday, was buried at ... Publication: Dec 4 1953 - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: "..., Eugene O'Neill, the .65-year-old playwright and Nobel literary prize-winner died in Boston on Friday of bron chial pneumonia. He ha... Publication: Nov 30 1953 - Perth, Western Australia, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: ... supply routes between the Delta and. Communist China.-Reuters. Eugene O'Neill Dies Aged 65 NEW YORK, Sun.-The once prolific writer, Euge... Publication: Nov 30 1953 - Perth, Western Australia, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: ... Fourteenth Century. Playwright dies at 65 BOSTON. Sat (AAP) — Eugene O'Neill ... a meeting of vil lagers. At the meeting the local witch... Publication: Nov 29 1953 - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: "...tomorrow.

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Publication: Dec 4 1953 - Launceston, Tasmania, Australia Page: Australian Newspapers Text: "...awards FAMOUS U.S. DRAMATIST DIES NEW YORK, Friday: Eugene O'Neill, 65 year-old playwright, and 1936 Nobel Literary Prize winner, die... Publication: Nov 28 1953 - Adelaide, South Australia, Australia Page: brother About Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Prize in Literature 1936 Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was a Nobel-prize winning American playwright. More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced American drama to the dramatic realism pioneered by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg, and was the first to use true American vernacular in his speeches. His plays involve characters who inhabit the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair.

O'Neill wrote only one comedy (Ah, Wilderness!): all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. Eugene O'Neill's life was connected to New London, Connecticut. His father was an Irish-born stage actor named James O'Neill, who had grown up in impoverished circumstances and became famous for playing the title role in a stage version of The Count of Monte Cristo. His mother, Ella Quinlan O'Neill, was the emotionally fragile daughter of a wealthy father who died when she was seventeen. O'Neill's mother never recovered from the death of her second son, Edmund, who had died of measles at the age of two. She later became addicted to morphine as a result of Eugene O'Neill's difficult birth. Eugene O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room. Because of his father's profession, O'Neill was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he found his only solace in books. After being suspended from Princeton University, he spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism.

O'Neill's parents and older brother Jamie (who drank himself to death at the age of 45) died within three years of one another, and O'Neill turned to writing as a form of escape. Despite his depression he had a deep love for the sea, and it became a prominent theme in most of his plays, several of which are set onboard ships like the ones that he worked on. While he was associated with the Provincetown Players, several of his early plays were put on by that group. O'Neill had previously been employed by the New London Telegraph, writing poetry as well as reporting. It wasn't until his experience in 1912–13 at a sanatorium (where he was recovering from tuberculosis) that he decided to devote himself full time to writing plays. (Connecticut College maintains the Louis Sheaffer Collection, consisting of material collected by O'Neill's most thorough biographer. The principal collection of O'Neill papers is at Yale University.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut fosters the development of new plays under his name.) During the 1910s O'Neill was a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably Communist Party USA founder John Reed. O'Neill also at one time had a romantic relationship with Reed's wife, writer Louise Bryant. O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds about the life of John Reed, in which he served as the film's voice of anticommunism and cynicism. O'Neill was married to Kathleen Jenkins from 1909 to 1912, during which time they had one son, Eugene Jr. In 1917, O'Neill met Agnes Boulton, a successful writer of commercial fiction, and they married in April 1918. The years of their marriage — during which the couple had two children, Shane and Oona — are described vividly in her 1958 memoir Part of a Long Story. They divorced in 1929, after O'Neill abandoned Boulton and the children for the actress Carlotta Monterey.

In 1929 O'Neill and Monterey moved to the Loire Valley in northwest France, where they lived in the Chateau du Plessis in St. Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre-et-Loire. During the early 1930s they returned to the United States and lived in Sea Island, Georgia, at a house called Casa Genotta. He moved to Danville, California in 1937 and lived there until 1944. His house there (known as Tao House), is today the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site. O'Neill's first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His best-known plays include "Anna Christie" (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms 1924, Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra 1931, and his only comedy Ah, Wilderness!, a wistful re-imagining of his own youth as he wished it had been. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play The Iceman Cometh was produced in 1946. The following year's A Moon for the Misbegotten failed, and did not gain recognition as being among his best works until decades later. He was also part of the modern movement to revive the classical heroic mask from ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh theatre in some of his plays.[1] O'Neill was very interested in the Faust theme, especially in the 1920s.[2] He is also known for the very poetic names of many of his plays. In their first years together, Monterey organized O'Neill's life, enabling him to devote himself to writing. However, she later became addicted to potassium bromide, and the marriage deteriorated, resulting in a number of separations. (O'Neill always complained about her cooking, maintaining that the only thing she knew how to make was chili with cornbread.) She was dramatic and shallow, but O'Neill needed her, and she needed him. Although they separated several times, they never divorced.

In 1943, O'Neill disowned his daughter Oona for marrying the English actor, director and producer Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54. He never saw Oona again. He also had distant relationships with his sons, Eugene O'Neill Jr., a Yale classicist who suffered from alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40, and Shane O'Neill, a heroin addict who also committed suicide. After suffering from multiple health problems (including alcoholism) over many years, O'Neill ultimately faced a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it impossible for him to write (he had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way) during the last 10 years of his life. While at Tao House, O’Neill had intended to write a cycle of 11 plays chronicling an American family since the 1800s. Only two of these, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions were ever completed.

As his health worsened, O’Neill lost inspiration for the project and wrote the three large autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before leaving Tao House and losing his ability to write. Drafts of many other uncompleted plays were destroyed by Carlotta at Eugene’s request. O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Shelton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. (The building is now the Shelton Hall dormitory at Boston University.) A revised analysis of his autopsy report shows that, contrary to the previous diagnosis, he did not have Parkinson's disease, but a late-onset cerebellar cortical atrophy. He was interred in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

O'Neill's final words were reportedly "Born in a hotel room, and God dammit, died in one!" Although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death, in 1956 Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, and produced on stage to tremendous critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. This last play is now considered to be his finest play. Other posthumously-published works include A Touch of the Poet (1958) and More Stately Mansions (1967).

Eugene O'Neill, Nobel Prize in Literature 1936's Timeline 1888 The Tim Buckley Archives Nine Plays Selected by the Author 1932 Nobel Prize Edition The Emperor Jones, 1920;The Hairy Ape, 1922;All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1924; Desire Under the Elms, 1925; Marco Millions 1923-25; The Great God Brown, 1926; Strange Interlude, 1928 (Pulitzer Prize); Mourning Becomes Electra (Trilogy - Homecoming, The Hunted, The Haunted) 1929-1932. Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888  1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg.

They were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy - Ah, Wilderness! - .Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism. After suffering from multiple health problems (including depression and alcoholism) over many years, O'Neill ultimately faced a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it impossible for him to write during the last ten years of his life. He had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way Despite critical acclaim for his work, his personal life was steeped in tragedy. In 1943, O'Neill disowned his daughter Oona for marrying Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54. He never saw Oona again. He also had distant relationships with his sons, Eugene, Jr., a Yale classicist who suffered from alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40, and Shane O'Neill, a heroin addict who also committed suicide.

As his health worsened, ONeill lost inspiration for the project and wrote the three large autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before losing his ability to write. Although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death, in 1956, his widow Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, and produced on stage to tremendous critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in Times Square and died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he, in a barely audible whisper, said, "I knew it.

Born in a hotel room, and damn it, dying in a hotel room." Eugene O'Neill Archives - Hodnett Cooper Tweet On the Georgia coast, on neighboring quiet islands, two exceptional and historically interesting properties are currently on the market. On St. Simons Island, Georgia is the winter home of renowned painter Maxfield Parrish. And on neighboring Sea Island, Georgia is the spectacular home originally built by Pulitzer Prize-winning Playwright Eugene O’Neill. Maxfield Parrish’s St. Simons Island Winter Retreat In the early 1900s, distinguished painter Maxfield Parrish and his wife Lydia took breaks from the Pennsylvania winter at their retreat on St. Simons Island. Maxfield Parrish was born in Philadelphia, the son of painter and etcher Stephen Parrish. Maxfield attended Haverford College, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry. A commission to illustrate “Mother Goose in Prose” in 1897 launched his formal career.

He went on to illustrate a body of children’s’ books—his signature use of vivid colors led his illustrations to overshadow the authors and the books become known as “Parrish books.” In the 1910s and 1920s, he was commissioned by popular magazines including Colliers and Life and was a favorite of advertisers as well. During their time on St. Simons Island, Maxfield’s wife, Lydia, became enchanted with African singing circles and songs that had been passed through generations of African-American slaves. She was dedicated to studying and preserving the tradition and published a collection of songs in 1942. Parrish was one of the most successful illustrators and painters of his time and his style continues to influence artists today. His most famous painting, Daybreak, sold in 2006 for $7.6 million. Maxfield Parrish “Daybreak” (1922). Photo from wikipedia The five-bedroom, four-bath home is currently on the market for $1,090,000. The secluded estate is surrounded on three sides by marsh, a National Park and tidal creek.

The home features fabulous handcrafted woodwork, an antique Fireplace from the 1700s, sunroom with Mexican tile, and a large sparkling gunite pool. Because of its location adjacent to the Bloody Marsh Battle Site, British, Spanish and Guale Indian artifacts from the property’s rich history continue to be unearthed. To see photos and for more information visit Hodnett Cooper Real Estate. 11812 Old Demere Road, Hodnett Cooper Real Estate 11812 Old Demere Road, Hodnett Cooper Real Estate 11812 Old Demere Road, Hodnett Cooper Real Estate Eugene O’Neill’s Sea Island Home The Sea Island home was built for the Eugene and his wife Carlotta O’Neill in 1931. They called the home “Casa Genotta,” a combination of their first names. A groundbreaking playwright, Eugene O’Neill was among the first American playwrights to includes speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringe of society. O’Neill’s first published play Beyond the Horizon opened on Broadway in 1920 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 1936, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

His most notable plays include The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Price 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra and The Iceman Cometh. His only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness, was written at the Sea Island home. Perhaps a nod to the relaxed atmosphere of beachfront island living. O’Neill is not only known for his work, but also his tumultuous personal life. At times in his life, he suffered from depression and alcoholism. He left Princeton University after only one year, with varying accounts regarding his departure/suspension. He married three times and had three children. In 1943, O’Neill disowned his daughter Oona for marrying Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54. After his death, Carlotta arranged for his autobiography, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, to be published and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. The beachfront home was built in the 1930s—the O’Neills resided in the home from 1932 to 1937.

The second floor features a library designed to resemble a wooden ship where O’Neill did most of his writing while on Sea Island. Other features include seven bedrooms, six baths and an extraordinary brick-paved swimming pool area. The home is currently on the market for $6,450,000. To see photos and for more information, visit Sea Island Properties. Eugene O’Neill’s Sea Island home, “Casa Genotta” (photo from curbed.com) Eugene O’Neill’s Sea Island home (photo from curbed.com) Source: Wikipedia Eugene O'Neill - Eugene O'Neill Biography - Poem Hunter Eugene O'Neill - Eugene O'Neill Biography - Poem Hunter Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. Early Life O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in New York City on October 16, 1888. O'Neill's father, James O'Neill, was one of Nineteenth Century America's most popular actors. Due to his father's profession, O'Neill was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he found his only solace in books. O'Neill spent his summers in New London, Connecticut.

In 1906 he entered Princeton but was soon expelled.Accounts vary as to why he left. He may have been dropped for attending too few classes, been suspended for "conduct code violations", or "for breaking a window," or according to a more concrete but possibly apocryphal account, because he threw "a beer bottle into the window of Professor Woodrow Wilson," future president of the United States) He spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism. O'Neill's parents and elder brother Jamie (who drank himself to death at the age of 45) died within three years of one another, not long after he had begun to make his mark in the theater. Despite his depression he had a deep love for the sea, and it became a prominent theme in many of his plays, several of which are set onboard ships like the ones that he worked on. He married in 1909 but divorced within three years, however he did have a son during the time he was married. By 1912, O'Neill had held a multitude of odd jobs, including one as a gold prospector in Honduras.

He had also become a regular at New York City's flophouses and dingy saloons. That same year he became ill with tuberculosis and was inspired to become a playwright while reading during his recovery. Literary Career During the 1910s O'Neill was a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably Communist Labor Party founder John Reed. O'Neill also had a brief romantic relationship with Reed's wife, writer Louise Bryant. O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film Reds about the life of John Reed. His involvement with the Provincetown Players began in mid-1916. O'Neill is said to have arrived for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full of plays." Susan Glaspell describes what was probably the first ever reading of Bound East for Cardiff which took place in the living room of Glaspell and her husband George Cram Cook's home on Commercial Street, adjacent to the wharf (pictured) that was used by the Players for their theater.

Glaspell writes in The Road to the Temple, "So Gene took Bound East for Cardiff out of his trunk, and Freddie Burt read it to us, Gene staying out in the dining-room while reading went on. He was not left alone in the dining-room when the reading had finished." The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neill's early works in their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Some of these early plays began downtown and then moved to Broadway. O'Neill's first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His first major hit was The Emperor Jones, which ran on Broadway in 1920 and obliquely commented on the U.S. occupation of Haiti that was a topic of debate in that year's presidential election.

His best-known plays include Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and his only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness!, a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been. In 1936 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play The Iceman Cometh was produced in 1946. The following year's A Moon for the Misbegotten failed, and did not gain recognition as being among his best works until decades later. He was also part of the modern movement to revive the classical heroic mask from ancient Greek theatre and Japanese Noh theatre in some of his plays, such as The Great God Brown and Lazarus Laughed. O'Neill was very interested in the Faust theme, especially in the 1920s. His career as playwright consisted of three periods. During his realist period, the plays utilize his own experiences, especially those he had as a seaman.

In the 1920s he decided to try his hand at expressionism in am effort to capture the forces behind human life on stage. These plays were influenced by ideas of Freidrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. During the final of his three periods O'Neill returned to realism. These woks are considered to be his best. The plays in his final period once again draw on his own experiences for their story lines and themes. Family Life O'Neill was married to Kathleen Jenkins from October 2, 1909 to 1912, during which time they had one son, Eugene O'Neill, Jr. (1910–1950). In 1917, O'Neill met Agnes Boulton, a successful writer of commercial fiction, and they married on April 12, 1918. The years of their marriage—during which the couple had two children, Shane and Oona—are described vividly in her 1958 memoir Part of a Long Story.

They divorced in 1929, after O'Neill abandoned Boulton and the children for the actress Carlotta Monterey (born San Francisco, California, December 28, 1888; died Westwood, New Jersey, November 18, 1970). O'Neill and Carlotta married less than a month after he officially divorced his previous wife. In 1929, O'Neill and Monterey moved to the Loire Valley in central France, where they lived in the Château du Plessis in Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre-et-Loire. During the early 1930s they returned to the United States and lived in Sea Island, Georgia, at a house called Casa Genotta. He moved to Danville, California in 1937 and lived there until 1944. His house there, Tao House, is today the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site. In their first years together, Monterey organized O'Neill's life, enabling him to devote himself to writing. She later became addicted to potassium bromide, and the marriage deteriorated, resulting in a number of separations. Although they separated several times, they never divorced.

In 1943, O'Neill disowned his daughter Oona for marrying the English actor, director and producer Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54. He never saw Oona again. He also had distant relationships with his sons, Eugene, Jr., a Yale classicist who suffered from alcoholism and committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40, and Shane O'Neill, a heroin addict who also committed suicide. Illness and Death After suffering from multiple health problems (including depression and alcoholism) over many years, O'Neill ultimately faced a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it impossible for him to write during the last 10 years of his life; he had tried using dictation but found himself unable to compose in that way. While at Tao House, O’Neill had intended to write a cycle of 11 plays chronicling an American family since the 1800s. Only two of these, A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions were ever completed.

As his health worsened, O’Neill lost inspiration for the project and wrote three largely autobiographical plays, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before leaving Tao House and losing his ability to write. Drafts of many other uncompleted plays were destroyed by Carlotta at Eugene’s request. O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he, in a barely audible whisper, spoke his last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room." (The building later became the Shelton Hall dormitory at Boston University. There is an urban legend perpetuated by students that O'Neill's spirit haunts the room and dormitory.) A revised analysis of his autopsy report shows that, contrary to the previous diagnosis, he did not have Parkinson's disease, but a late-onset cerebellar cortical atrophy. Dr.

Harry Kozol, the lead prosecuting expert of the Patty Hearst trial, treated O'Neill during these last years of ailment. He also was present for the death and announced the fact to the public. He is interred in the Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. In 1956 Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, although his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made public until 25 years after his death. It was produced on stage to tremendous critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. This last play is widely considered to be his finest. Other posthumously-published works include A Touch of the Poet (1958) and More Stately Mansions (1967). The United States Postal Service honored O'Neill with a Prominent Americans series (1965–1978) $1 postage stamp Museums and Collections O'Neill's home in New London, Monte Cristo Cottage, was made a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

His home in Danville, California, near San Francisco, was preserved as the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in 1976. Connecticut College maintains the Louis Sheaffer Collection, consisting of material collected by the O'Neill biographer. The principal collection of O'Neill papers is at Yale University. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut fosters the development of new plays under his name.

Eugene O'Neill's Works: The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946 Hughie, written 1941, first performed 1959 Long Day's Journey Into Night, written 1941, first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957 A Moon for the Misbegotten, written 1941–1943, first performed 1947 A Touch of the Poet, completed in 1942, first performed 1958 More Stately Mansions, second draft found in O'Neill's papers, first performed 1967 The Calms of Capricorn, published in 1983 One-act plays The Glencairn Plays, all of which feature characters on the fictional ship Glencairn -- filmed together as The Long Voyage Home: Bound East for Cardiff, 1914 In The Zone, 1917 The Long Voyage Home, 1917 Moon of the Caribbees, 1918 Other one-act plays include A Wife for a Life, 

1913 The Web, 1913

Question: Who wrote The Iceman Cometh, and disowned his daughter for marrying Charlie Chaplin?
Answer: Eugene O'Neill